What’s the best way to get heavy medium from brushes? Even after I clean them with turpenoid followed by soap and water, they’ll still become hard once they dry. Even when They seem to be fully cleaned. Any recommendations?

clean with turpentine not turpenoid. turp is stronger. noid is milder and better for use in painting

I use Master’s Brush Soap – the soap that is actually made to clean and preserve expensive oil painting brushes – and I just started using Liquin. I did notice that the brushes need to be washed as soon as I am done with painting, and a little more thoroughly. However, I have no problem getting them completely clean with Master’s Brush Soap (thank you, NancyMP! :heart:), without using turps or any other solvents at all first. Just warmish water and Master’s… takes 5 minutes to clean up. :thumbsup:

Are the brushes natural hair or synthetic?

+1 on the masters brush cleaner. I have one of those small jars with a wire mesh in the bottom of it filled with OMS that almost immediately gets 95% of the paint/medium out of my brushes, and then warm water and the masters brush cleaner to finish it off. I leave some of the brush cleaner to dry on the brushes, and they are maintaining their shape extremely well. The whole process takes 5-10 minutes for half a dozen brushes. I use Gamblin’s Neo Megilp alkyd medium when painting, and I’ve also used M. Grahams alkyd painting medium, never an issue when cleaning using this method.

Note: I must say the jar with the wire mesh in the bottom of it made a remarkable difference in how effective the OMS were. Just plain OMS in a jar never quite cut it.

Liquin is fully soluble in OMS (turpenoid) only!
Other more exotic soaps or more powerful solvents are not required to clean up from Liquin.
Something else is going on like maybe you are waiting too long before cleaning them off and they have started to set up or partially solidify. The open time will be variable by a number of conditions, yours may be fairly short. So I would just keep them clean them more frequently.
The same thing will happen when any oil paint or oil medium that is left residualy in your brushes.

Even when They seem to be fully cleaned.

If the brushes were clean then they would not harden up.
They may seem to be clean when they are actually not so. There may be material still left down near the ferrule, etc.

I have used liquin and it cleaned up just fine with OMS, but when I tried to look up this info to verify it from Winsor Newton, I see that they have changed their website and I can’t find this info anywhere. If there is any problem with the OMS you are using then just step it up a notch to regular mineral spirits. Of course following that with soap and water would not hurt a thing either.
But if you want to store your brushes in a non drying oil such as someone mentioned, do it after the mineral spirits, then if you store in something like mineral oil, you can wash that out before reuse.

ummmmm..has anybody asked what his brand of brushes is? maybe it’s a nail polish brush